This invention was discovered and identified in central Palm Beach County, Fla. It was one of a number of unique and distinctly different vegetative off types/inclusions growing adjacent to an uncultivated area that was initially used for driveways and a parking area. With time, a portion of this area was eventually paved and crudely landscaped with a common unknown population of centipedegrass. The centipedegrass was planted and maintained as a fringe around the paved driveways, the grassed parking lots, and used as the transition vegetation in the understory of the pine and palmetto wooded area around the church yard and its parking areas. Because this area of sandy woodland soil was only intended to be sporadically maintained with very low inputs, centipedegrass was chosen for this turf application. As a species, centipede grass typically requires minimal cultivation, survives dryland conditions, and exhibits weed suppression through allelopathy.
‘BA-417’ was originally propagated asexually from a single 6.0 inch stolon taken from the off type inclusion noted above in the summer of 1997. ‘BA-417’ was chosen from a group of advanced lines initially selected as off types in an undeveloped and unimproved population of centipedegrass, which is consistently known and recognized throughout the turf industry and in the scientific literature as “Common” centipedegrass. Over a four year research period ‘BA-417’ was vegetatively propagated multiple times and evaluated at three research sites in Florida. Throughout multiple vegetative increases, ‘BA-417’ has remained uniform and genetically consistent. The denomination of this new invention is ‘BA-417’, but in commerce ‘BA-417’ will be marketed under the synonym “Hammock Centipede”, which is its commercial designation in the United States.
The distinctness of ‘BA-417’ from ‘Centennial’ (unpatented) and its progenitor, the “Common” population of centipedegrass, is based on four sets of traits including: 1) floral morphology; 2) leaf and stem morphology; 3) color and pigmentation; and 4) rate of growth and cover.
For the purpose of registration under the “International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants” (generally known by its French acronym UPOV Convention) and noting Sections 1612 of the Manual of Patent Examination Procedures this new variety of Centipedegrass of the present invention is named ‘BA-417’.